Sean at his peak

He may have been garlanded with Oscars and Best Actor accolades in the past, but Sean Penn hasn't delivered a better performance than this portrait of Sam Bicke, in writer-director Niels Mueller's impressive debut.

Bicke is loosely based on the true-life character in Seventies America who attempted to hijack a plane and fly it into the White House. A moustachioed little man of 44 with a slight stutter, a brace on his leg and a chip on his shoulder, Penn's Bicke wants to believe in the American Dream but finds it increasingly frustrating.

His faith, both in his own uncertain abilities and in the world around his life in Baltimore, is constantly undermined.

He is lonely, depressed - a loser. Separated from his waitress wife (Naomi Watts), Bicke is left alone on her porch when she spurns his attempts at reconciliation. The children scamper indoors after reluctantly posing for a photograph; the dog's tail wags slightly as if only vaguely remembering that he used to live there.

His boss - Bicke is a salesman in a furniture store - tries to initiate him into the secrets of salesmanship. This is 1974: the era of Richard Nixon. Nixon, says the boss, sold himself successfully as President - twice - as the man to get America out of Vietnam. Power, he adds, is a state of mind. If you don't believe you have any, you haven't.

Matters don't improve much when Bicke loses his job. He applies for a bank loan in order to go into business with his black partner (Don Cheadle) and is turned down. Thinking this is more a matter of colour prejudice than his own inadequate espousal of a tyre-selling opportunity, he approaches the Black Panthers with a donation. If they included whites in their membership, Bicke suggests, they would comfortably double it.

"I'm in the same boat as you," he says. "No." they reply, "You own the boat." It's not long before Bicke finally cracks - he will get himself noticed, whatever it takes.

Penn has displayed angry frustration before - but never paired with such squirming vulnerability. His performance, aided by those of Watts and Jack Thompson, as his boss, pushes the film towards the realm of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman or Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

But there is a problem - the game is given away at the start. The film's schematic structure indicates an awful outcome in the opening sequences and doesn't allow us sufficient surprise at its tragic outcome.

Even so, Mueller's first feature, which numbers Leonardo DiCaprio, Alexander Payne (Sideways) and Alfonso Cuarón (21 Grams) as its brave producers - all fighting a five-year battle to get it made - is impressive and memorable. And, though set more than 30 years ago, it seems more relevant now than ever.

The Assassination Of Richard Nixon
Cert: cert15